Nothing About GTA VI’s Launch Can Be Normal

Grand Theft Auto VI is finally, seemingly almost here, which of course means it’s time for everyone to go completely insane. This week alone saw a hacker who monologues like Sephiroth leak portions of the incineratingly anticipated crime caper, as well as the revelation that the US Army is offering four days with the game in exchange for several years of soldiers’ lives. All that, and we haven’t even gotten to GTA VI’s big extended preview bash next week, which Netflix is hosting for some reason. On the latest Aftermath Hours, we reckon with a wild ride that, whether ultimately exhilarating or ruinous, will almost certainly prove to be one of a kind.

This time around, the staff of Aftermath convenes to discuss the pre-math of Grand Theft Auto VI’s impending release. With a Netflix preview of the game—itself pretty unprecedented—a week away, fired Rockstar workers are asking fans not to boycott the game while the aforementioned hacker has taken to leaking more gameplay footage with each passing day. So far, despite the evident addition of controversial new systems like… gas, it’s looking pretty much like you’d expect a Grand Theft Auto game to look.

We talk about how GTA reached these dizzying highs of hype in the first place and how a rapidly changing industry all but guarantees that no single video game ever will again. We also ponder the funniest possible outcome: What if GTA VI, the latest installment in a series known for low-brow humor and surface-level satire, turns out to be nuanced and thoughtful?

You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, leave a review so that we can spend a decade and one billion dollars developing a sequel to Aftermath Hours with slightly better graphics.

Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):

Chris: I don’t want to give it to [the hackers] because I think they’re a little bit annoying, but there is also this element of the way this game is being doled out in this hyper-special way; it feels like [Rockstar] is like “No one is ever gonna let us do this shit again. They’re never gonna give us a moment to ever, ever, ever have this dripfeed.” Games don’t have the interest to do that anymore. There’s too many of them. It’s hard to manufacture this scale of excitement.

And so, I don’t cheer when this stuff is ruined, but it is kind of funny to have everything very carefully laid out, and then a guy in a plastic V For Vendetta mask is like “If you do not agree to our demands, the fire burns.” Dog, you’re talking about video games. I’m sorry to be kinda mean. I agree, but this is the funniest way you could’ve done it.

Nathan: There probably won’t be this amount of hype for a triple-A blockbuster video game again. Luke, you’ve written about how GTA VI feels like the final iteration of this kind of thing. Do you want to go into that a little bit?

Luke: It’s basically what Nathan just said: Can you honestly look inside your heart and imagine another video game getting this treatment? Getting this level of brand recognition and mass following and decades-long success and obnoxious Netflix specials and Sephiroth-adjacent coin-selling hacker kids sending manifestos? It just really feels like the ride we’ve been on for the last 10-15 years in triple-A video games is coming to an end, and this is sort of the final stand of it.

Grand Theft Auto VI is what it is because of the last five and associated Grand Theft Auto games. This is a very long-running—and very single-player, for a long time—series. Over that time and over the quality of the games and their sustained success, they have developed a fan base globally that must be in the hundreds of millions. It’s the biggest single-player video game.

Can you see another game being afforded the opportunity to have that sustained level of success? Nobody’s investing in what the next Grand Theft Auto could be. Nobody’s supporting the current successful games that could be as successful as Grand Theft Auto became. Series are getting wound down. Studios are getting closed. Everyone’s being laid off. Everyone’s being pushed onto more temporary, ethereal projects—live service games and online titles and all this other stuff that doesn’t have the lasting legacy of something like GTA. There’s no space.

There’s cultural stuff here, too. You mentioned algorithms [and how they fundamentally change the way newer generations are discovering and interacting with series]. The sort of demise of a shared reality or a centralized information system. Grand Theft Auto is a series that was born of us all being on the same websites and watching the same TV stations.

A comparison I always think of is—and I’ve had this thought exercise for the past 20 years or so—what’s the biggest band in the world? And every time a band would kind of reach for that space on the podium, you would realize they’re all old bands. It’s just a matter of which ones are surviving the longest. None of these are new bands; these are all old bands from when everybody had CDs in stores and centralized places where music was distributed. Now that music is blasted all over the internet via half a dozen streaming services and whatever else, people can live comfortably within algorithm-driven nests and never encounter other bands. You might see a band headlining a festival, and you have never heard of them.